


The Way We Are Now

by iliveinfantasies



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Angry!Johanna, Angst, F/F, Hunger Games, Joniss - Freeform, Post-Mockingjay, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, katanna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 16:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5254715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iliveinfantasies/pseuds/iliveinfantasies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johanna's confusing relationship with Katniss after the events of Mockingjay. And the way Johanna's head fucks her up about it.</p><p>Post-Mockingjay. Johanna POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way We Are Now

**Author's Note:**

> This is my favorite characterization of Johanna that I have written so far, I think. I think it captures her the best. Please do let me know, though. As always, comments and criticisms are appreciated.
> 
> Warnings: swearing, angst, angry!jo

Sometimes, when the sky is just a little too gray and the air smells damp like wet dirt, I can see her eyes taking me in, glazing over me, scanning the surface of my bones and bruises. I’m just a little too thin, a little too worn, a little too broken. She sees me like her favorite goddamn hunting jacket, all soft-leather and scratches, threadbare and frayed around the elbows. Then she always stops and shifts her eyes, because she knows that she’s no fucking better, and that I can’t stand the fucking pity. She’s still a goddamn mess, still brainless, a half-there girl of disordered braids and scuffed lace-up boots,  _just the fucking same,_  like she  _just can’t stand_  to be something else. We’re both huge fucking messes, the sort of messes that explode sometimes and come back together to create an even bigger pile of disaster.

Sometimes I look into her eyes and see nothing, just gray, fucking emptiness. And it eats me, just a little, wares me down because  _my fucking_   _god_  doesn’t she know she’s not the only fuck-up here? So I let out a tirade of harsh words and curses, seeping all the venom I’ve built up out of my veins and through my pores, and she lets me, she fucking  _lets me_ , because she owes me her life and she knows it. And that’s a debt I never want her to repay, because I don’t want to be saved by someone who can’t even fucking save herself.

We fell into an odd kind of routine after the war. At night, she still shakes and screams, kicking the air against invisible assailants, howling out, pressing all of her pain between the pages of her dreams. Against my better fucking judgment, I still go and climb into bed with her, wrapping my arms around her waist. This is us, now, the way we are, the way our goddamn lives have played out until this point. Dull reality and survival as they have to be. We are here, and this is (we are each other’s) daily fucking dysfunction. It’s not a real life, not  _really,_ but it is, at least, an existence; a smoke rising steadily from the ground after a fire, even after all the dust has settled and the ash has been cleared from the air.

Sometimes I think that the thing that we have is turning into something beyond just coexisting in each others spaces (or more getting in  _the fucking way)._ Then I squelch that thought  _really fucking fast_ because I know it’ll never work. I already know I don’t deserve her, and I already know that she doesn’t deserve me, and I already know I don’t deserve love, so what’s the fucking point? The last time I allowed myself to love someone, they had been killed, plucked straight from the fucking earth like a white rose by President Snow to  _teach me_. I had fucking learned, alright. I had loved, maybe, and then they’d died, and I still had to be a Capitol fucking consolation prize. _There are no winners._  There never fucking are, are there?

Now it’s finally dark, and we’ve played our little game where I climb into my own bed until I see the ends of her braid start to shake and then I pad across the room to climb into hers. We play because we have to play  _something._  We’re fucking  _winners,_ right, and we have to keep playing games because really, it’s all we have left, maybe the only power  _we still fucking have_. I shut my eyes to block out the light, curl my thoughts in on themselves – _brreeeeaaattthhheee_ \- and try to adjust my mind to the dark. Even though she’s gone from herself she’ll always be on fire, and that’s just a bit too bright for me at night. So I lie there, next to her, and I bury my face in her hair, and I inhale.

Again on these nights when it’s still and quiet and I’m the only one awake, I realize that it actually is something, and I can’t fucking stand it; it’s something, not love, really. Or maybe it  _is_ love, and I just don’t quite know how to recognize it anymore, like a person who slowly loses her vision and one day wakes up with the world a blur. But there are no cures for this, no corrective lenses.

I allow myself to press my chapped lips against her hair, soothing and cool, but brittle, like frozen branches. I allow myself this one small (not even really a) kiss, and I really fucking doubt that I’ll ever do it when she’s awake. She smells like smoke and sharp pine, like the bitter taste of sap when it gets on your fingers and you can’t quite get it off before dinner. I can’t help but smile, just a little (even though I know that it looks like a grimace), because she smells like burning bridges and chopping trees, building houses and starting new life, even if it’s no fucking life at all. Just like she is. Just like I am. Just like we are.


End file.
